Mass-Losing Pulsating Stars and their Circumstellar Matter

Editing the proceedings of a scientific meeting is not an easy task. Sometimes people who give an excellent talk do not send the manuscript by the deadline. However, this time, thanks to the punctuality of all the participants, we have this excellent volume for the workshop on mass losing pulsating stars and their circumstellar matter prepared in time. Almost all of the oral presentations including the summary are collected in this volume. We regret that we cannot put in this volume a few posters that we failed to receive before the editorial work. The workshop was planned as a small meeting with less than fifty attendants because the city of Sendai was far from the most of the active institutions. However, the number of submitted papers exceeded the SOC's expectation; many interesting contributions had to be scheduled in the poster session. Still, the oral sessions were so tight that many participants might have felt frustrated for the shortage of discussions. The organizers of the workshop have to apologize to the attendants for the inconvenience caused from such a happy underestimate about the size of the workshop.

"AGB variables are far more interesting than I had previously thought. I don't hesitate to recommend this book, not only to those specifically involved with those stars, but also to those in the related fields of pulsation and/or mass loss, and even to a more-general readership."
(Rich Townsend in The Observatory, 124:1178 (February 2004)

Klappentext

The rapid progress in research on mass-losing pulsating stars has now taken us far from its early photographic light variation study to the world of massive photometry and interferometic observations. Still some fundamental problems such as the pulsational mode and the mass-loss mechanism remain a mystery. In this volume the modern theoretical works are confronted with the latest observations and the active discussions indicate the directions of future research. Among the subjects presented in this workshop are: recent results of massive photometry; pulsation and properties of mass-losing stars; optical and infrared observations of circumstellar matter; radio and mm observations of circumstellar matter; distribution of maser sources in the Galaxy; VERA and other future projects. Thorough and up-to-date information on mass-losing stars provides invaluable references for all researchers and students who are interested in the AGB evolution, pulsation models, circumstellar matter, precision astrometry, and the Galactic structure.

Inhalt
I Recent Results of Massive Photometry.- II Pulsation and Properties of Mass-Losing Stars.- III Optical and IR Observations of Circumstellar Matter.- IV Radio and mm Observations of Circumstellar Matter.- V Distribution of Maser Sources in the Galaxy.- VI VERA and Other Future Projects.- VII Conference Summary.- List of Participants.- Topic Index.- Author Index.